


Together

by apparitionism



Series: Boone, et cetera [3]
Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: Alternate Timeline, F/F, Helena is kind of in absentia, Nate is no threat here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-02
Updated: 2015-03-02
Packaged: 2018-03-16 01:16:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3468986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apparitionism/pseuds/apparitionism
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Myka Bering, who was once in the Secret Service but now teaches second grade in Boone, Wisconsin (and never heard of anything called Warehouse 13), has fallen hard for the new high school literature teacher, Emily Lake (who has no memory of anything called Warehouse 13).</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My S4 fixit story, which began in “Sleeping” and continued in “Boone,” featured several timelines. In one, non-Warehouse-agent Myka goes to live in Boone, becomes a second-grade teacher, and then falls head-over-heels in love with the new high school literature teacher, Emily Lake (the “amnesiac” Janus-coined H.G.). Adelaide is one of Myka’s students, but Adelaide’s mother is still alive, so there’s no Nate danger. (See the first chapter of the story “[Boone](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1701854/chapters/3622055)” for details.) Anyway, this story was originally posted on Tumblr for [amatterofcomplication](http://amatterofcomplication.tumblr.com), who asked to see more of Myka and Emily together. There are a couple other little pieces about this Myka and this Emily that I may haul over as well.

Adelaide Plumb takes an enormous bite of a slice of pineapple-and-spinach pizza. She then tries to say, around a chunk of pineapple, “Ah hinkmzbring ha-ee.”

Her mother, Amy Plumb, sighs. “Chewing and talking. Not at the same time, please.”

After a gulping swallow (and with a less apologetic expression than Amy would have preferred), Adelaide repeats, “I think Ms. Bering is happy.”

Amy is unaccustomed to receiving bulletins regarding the emotional status of Adelaide’s second-grade teacher. “That’s… great?” she guesses, raising an eyebrow in the direction of her husband, Nate, across the table. Having just taken a rather large bite of pizza himself, he simply shrugs.

“It is not great,” Adelaide says. “It is the worst thing _ever_.”

Amy looks to the heavens. She loves her daughter dearly, but Adelaide is queen of the unexpected response. Also of the non sequiturs, as she proves the next moment by saying, “I think Dad should learn to cook.”

“Hey!” Nate protests. “I just ordered you your favorite weird pizza. You could show some gratitude.”

“But when it isn’t Mom’s night to cook, then you could _cook_ ,” Adelaide says. “I don’t want to someday get tired of my favorite pizza. And it is not weird. It is delicious.”

“It’s a little weird,” Amy says, but hurries to add, “but yes, delicious. And honey, she has a point. You kind of have leaned on Pizza Station lately.”

“It’s because you guys pretended to like what I made, before! You just smiled, so how was I supposed to know it was awful?”

“Presumably, you were eating it too,” Amy points out.

Nate says, “But it was what you guys thought that mattered.”

“That is the problem with Ms. Bering,” Adelaide intones.

Amy squints at her daughter. “The problem with Ms. Bering is that she likes your dad’s awful cooking?”

“No! The problem is that she smiles at everything now! How am I supposed to know when I’m doing the right thing or the wrong thing when she is just _smiling all the time_?”

****

Myka Bering has never smiled so much in her life. All she does is smile, all the time, at everyone. But particularly at one person, the source of all these sunny expressions: Emily Lake. When she isn’t smiling directly at Emily, she’s smiling because she’s thinking about Emily. And on the rare occasions when she isn’t thinking about Emily, she’s smiling because she’s just generally happy, in a way that is, if she’s being honest, hard to believe. Hard to process. But she is not inclined to spend a lot of time processing it, because for once in her life, she feels content to let something just be.

Intellectually, she knows it’s chemical, this overwhelming initial rush of love. She knows that the high will fade, that at some point she’ll feel more like the person she was before Emily happened to her… but that is why she is letting it be. She has been in love only once before in her life (not as crazily as this, though), and she was so worried, then, that someone would _find out_ that she did not enjoy it. There was no room for reveling in it, for letting it seep into everything she did. Now there is room. There is room, and she can let Emily fill it.

They have been together only two weeks—they have slept apart for only two nights of those two weeks—when Myka first says aloud, “She should move in.” She says it to her coffee cup. She is in the faculty lounge, with a few brief moments before her students’ recess ends. “Right?” she asks the cup. “I’m right, aren’t I?” She is so high on adrenaline that she really thinks it would not be a surprise for the cup to answer her back—but it just sits there. “Fine,” she tells it. Naturally, she smiles. “Be that way.”

So she formulates a plan: since her teaching day ends before Emily’s does—the elementary kids get out an hour before the high schoolers do; it’s so the buses, all four of them, can carry the entire student body in two shifts—she will catch Emily in an hour, before her last period of the day. She would do it now, but she doesn’t think she can make it all the way across campus and back, even with her long legs. (“Why don’t you ever wear skirts?” Emily had asked, just a few days ago. Myka started to explain about the Secret Service and professionalism and being taken seriously, but Emily had just blinked at her, then said, “If I had long and beautiful legs like yours, I would wear skirts all the time.” When Myka pointed out that Emily did, in fact, wear skirts most of the time, Emily had laughed. “I would wear _different_ skirts.”)

She can’t go now, so she spends the last hour and forty-five minutes of the school day using a corner of her brain to formulate how she will say it. She keeps the bulk of her attention on her students, though, particularly Adelaide, who is usually such a shining star but who has been looking a little glum lately. As the end of the day nears, she checks in with each student regarding this day, and homework for the afternoon, and what tomorrow will be like. She asks Adelaide, with an encouraging smile, “Do you feel okay about the math worksheet?”

Adelaide gives her an exaggerated grimace in return. “It’s _probably_ okay,” she says.

Adelaide should not have trouble with a worksheet of math problems. Adelaide should be _thrilled_ about a worksheet of math problems. Something is going on. Myka resolves to call Adelaide’s mother very soon, to set up a conference.

Myka tries to maintain some empathy as Adelaide slumps out of the classroom with the rest of the children, but she starts buzzing again as soon as they’re gone. Emily’s fifth-period class should be ending momentarily, so if Myka hurries, she’ll have a good five minutes to talk to Emily before the last class starts. Five minutes should be plenty of time to say “My house feels empty whenever you’re not there; please come live in it with me.” That’s the best she could come up with on such short notice. She figures she can try to revise while she walks.

Revision: unsuccessful. She finds that she can’t think at all—or rather, she can think only of the fact that she is about to see Emily. She hasn’t seen her since this morning. As she makes her way through the halls of milling high schoolers, she is laughing at herself, and some of them look at her and laugh, this crazy teacher from the elementary school. If they only knew how crazy, she thinks.

How crazy: she peeks through the window on the door to Emily’s classroom and melts anew, melts and catches fire at the same time, and that shouldn’t even be possible, should it? But Emily is so intent, sitting there at her desk, staring down at what must be a pile of student papers. She reaches up a hand to adjust her ponytail—her hair is always in that ponytail when she’s at work, and it’s become a trigger, of sorts, for Myka, when Emily takes her hair down, or even better, when she lets Myka do that. There is a part of Myka that is sorely tempted to walk into that classroom, close and lock the door behind her, and pull Emily’s hair free… but that’s a fantasy for another time, because right now, Myka is on a mission. She lets out a breath and knocks softly on the door.

Emily looks up, and Myka sees in her eyes that same melting, that same fire. It’s _ridiculous_ how high this sends Myka. It’s also, always, a relief, because it reassures Myka that she’s not some crazy stalker, that she and Emily really are in this— _in love_ , she thinks, getting giddy again—together.

Emily looks back down at her desk; then she loses her grip on her pen, and it goes flying. Myka chuckles and opens the door a bit. “You make me drop things, Myka,” Emily tells her gravely.

“Got a minute?” Myka asks. “If you’re too busy grading, I can leave you alone.”

“For you? More than a minute. Not _much_ more,” Emily mock-warns. “I can’t just drop _everything_.”

“Good one,” Myka says as she eases into the classroom. Emily rises to meet her; they glance around, a bit furtively, before sharing a swift but eager kiss.

That kiss makes Myka forgets her script. She breathes, “Here’s the thing: I know you’re coming over tonight, but… would you like to stay?”

Emily furrows her brow. Adorably. “The night? I thought I was…” She leans closer to Myka to whisper, “I remembered to bring my toothbrush in my bag this time.”

“You…” Myka starts, then shakes her head. “No, I mean stay for good, stay tonight and don’t leave ever again. I mean move in.”

“Oh Myka,” Emily says, her eyes wide, “I’m afraid I can’t.”

Myka feels as if the floor beneath her is dissolving… she has nothing to stand on. Anyway, that’s what really needs to be happening, she reasons; the earth really needs to open up right now and swallow her whole.

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

Myka moves backward, away from Emily, groping blindly for the door handle, knowing that she really has to get out before she starts crying. How could she possibly have read the situation so wrong? And worse: how could she have let herself believe that everything was so right?

“Okay,” she says, “okay, we can just… I mean, you don’t want to, so okay…” She finds the door. Thank _god_ , she finds the door, and she gets out and into the hallway, because she has just got to breathe here for a second, and then she can figure out how to regroup. Yes, okay, she will _regroup_. In the hall, _not_ in Emily’s classroom, _not_ looking at Emily right now, because right now Emily is looking like everything that _in her life_ she always wanted but was sure she could never have. And guess what? She was right.

She’s out of the room for at most two seconds when Emily comes flying after her. “Myka!” she says, quietly but urgently.

Myka sighs. Okay, she is regrouping. Okay, she had moved too fast. It is all right. It is going to have to be all right. She got it wrong, that’s all. Just wrong. “I’m sorry,” she starts, “I didn’t mean to rush you or make you feel—”

“Myka,” Emily says again. “You know that I… well, that I…”

“Like me?” Myka says, with some hope.

“Of course I _like you_ ,” Emily chides. “I more than _like_ you. Myka, I _love_ you.”

“Then why—” Myka starts.

“You know I get things wrong sometimes,” Emily says. “You know that I do.”

And Myka does know; it’s an artifact of the accident Emily was in, the one that stole her memories. (“I will remember everything for you from now on,” Myka swore to Emily, when Emily first told her what happened, “because now my useless memory will be good for something.”) “But not this,” Myka says mournfully.

Emily sighs in what even Myka, in her agitated state, can tell is exasperation. “ _Especially_ this!” She takes Myka’s hands in hers. “All I meant was that I can’t do it _tonight_. I can’t move in _tonight_. I brought my toothbrush, but I forgot _clothes_.”

“Oh god,” Myka gulps. “I thought… I mean, I really thought…”  
  
“I know you did. I am so sorry. I thought I was _teasing_ you, but I don’t remember how to tease anyone. At all!” Emily is distraught.

Now Myka is too. She can’t bear to see that face so upset, so sad, so wrong: so she kisses it. She kisses Emily’s cheek, then her other cheek, then her mouth. Then she kisses Emily’s mouth again, because once they start kissing it is almost _impossible_ to stop.

Then she hears a giggle from behind her, and she is violently brought to the realization that they are in a high school hallway, surrounded by high school students. High school students who have already shown themselves _very interested_ in their new literature teacher. High school students who have now seen their new literature teacher kissing another teacher—another _female_ teacher—with some quite serious intent.

Myka once again would like to arrange for the earth to open up and swallow her—not for her sake, now, because she doesn’t really care what the teenagers think of _her_ —but to save Emily this embarrassment.

Which is why she is astonished when Emily raises her head and looks over Myka’s shoulder at those students, those teenagers, and says, not even severely, but completely neutrally, “What is so interesting here, exactly?”

“Uh…” Myka hears, and “Geez, Ms. Lake!” and “Wow!”

Emily says, “Class will be starting in a very few minutes, so I think taking your seats would be a good idea, wouldn’t it?”

And the students—two girls and a boy—shuffle past the two of them, faces downcast.

“Now,” Emily says to Myka, “are we okay?”

“I… don’t know,” Myka says. “Are _you_ okay? I mean, those kids…”

“Myka,” Emily says. “Myka, you are the most sweet, but I didn’t put that ‘safe space’ sign up for nothing. I mean it. If those children get the idea that I’m _ashamed_ , what will they think? And I’m _not_ ashamed. I may have wanted this, you, us, to be _private_ , maybe until I did move in with you, but I am not ashamed.”

And Myka’s the one ashamed now, because maybe she did feel a little embarrassed at the idea of students seeing, students _knowing_. Boone is a small town. She remembers when Emily put that poster up in her classroom, just a week and a half ago, and it had seemed _thrilling_ , because it was like an advertisement, but a weirdly private one. And now it isn’t at all private anymore.

So Myka finds herself in awe. Of this courageous woman who doesn’t even think about consequences, who just does what’s right. “I love you too,” she says. “So when you find the time to pack your clothes, will you _please_ come live with me? It’s a nice house, you said so.”

Emily leans back in Myka’s arms. “My apartment _is_ small,” she says.

Myka leans her forehead down to Emily’s. “But you’re small too. So there’s got to be some better reasons.”

“There are,” Emily tells her. “I’ll show you tonight.”

Myka floats home.

****

Amy shakes her head. “I’m so sorry, Ms. Bering.”

“No, please, call me Myka.”

“Myka,” Amy nods. “Adelaide’s been… just a little moody lately. I’m sure she’ll get over it.”

“So everything’s all right at home?”

“I think everything’s all right. I mean, I would like to think that. Her father wants to let her have a lizard as a pet. Is that all right, do you think?”

Ms. Bering, Myka, laughs. “I wouldn’t want one, but then I’m not very into pets. So if Adelaide wants a lizard, and honestly I’m not surprised Adelaide wants a lizard; I’d almost expect her to want a—”

Another woman walks into the classroom. “Myka,” she says, “I need the… oh. I’m so sorry.”

Myka says, “It’s okay. What do you need?”

The other woman smiles, very softly. “The key,” she says. “Because of the… um. Movers?”

“Oh,” Myka says. “Yes, god, I’m sorry, why didn’t I…” She reaches for her bag, pulls out a key ring, hands the whole thing over. “Sorry, Amy,” she says. “This is my… my partner. This is Emily Lake. Emily, this is Amy Plumb. I’ve told you about her daughter, Adelaide.”

Emily exclaims, “You’re Adelaide’s mother! Myka says such things about your daughter. Nothing bad, just that she’s… somewhat relentless.”

Amy looks from one woman to the other. She looks at Myka Bering’s besotted expression; she looks at Emily Lake’s fumbled handling of the keys. And she gets, suddenly, that this is new love, that this is _in love_ love, that these women are looking at each other in a way that she remembers from many years ago with her husband. “Oh,” she says out loud. “I think I know why we’re having this conversation. And I think I am going to sit Adelaide down and explain some things to her, and we will have no further problems with math worksheets.”

“Good?” Myka says.

Emily Lake smiles. Clearly, she is tuned in on a level that Myka is not quite. “I hope to meet your daughter sometime,” Emily Lake says. “In the meantime, tell her I apologize for having distracted her teacher.”

Amy laughs. “There is absolutely no need to apologize. Adelaide will get over it. She thinks the world revolves around her: it’s a good lesson, the idea that Ms. Bering’s world might revolve around somebody else. I hope she meets you too.”

Myka is looking at the both of them like they are from the moon. Then she smiles. “This is just how it’s going to be, isn’t it?” she says to Emily Lake, who nods solemnly.

Amy tells her, “This is pretty much how it is if you’re lucky. And congratulations, by the way.”

Myka blushes. Then she says what seems to be an exceptionally sincere thank you.

****

Emily came to Boone without much in the way of belongings, so moving her from her tiny apartment into Myka’s house takes all of one Friday afternoon—the afternoon of Myka’s conference with Amy—and the following Saturday morning. So when Monday morning comes, it is the second morning that Myka has awakened with a real, true partner in life (and someday soon even more, she swears to herself, just as soon as she can get the next level of courage up).

No one has to go home for anything . Everyone is already home. And today, Myka would like for everyone to _stay_ home. It’s Monday, yes, but the students have day off; it’s an in-service day, and the high school teachers have to go in earlier than the elementary staff do. It’s still _early_ early, but Emily’s finishing up getting ready to go while Myka is still snuggling in bed. “I don’t want you to leave,” Myka says.

“I don’t want to leave you,” Emily says back. “But you’re the one who didn’t want to get up and come in with me. Lazy.” She shakes her head.

Myka rolls over, nestles most of her body tighter under the covers. But she stretches one arm out, the one arm that can reach Emily standing by the bed, and runs a hand up her skirt. As far as she can, though it isn’t very far. The look she gives Emily is, she fears, more comical than alluring.

Emily says, severely, “Myka, I am going to be late.”

Myka pouts a little. She removes her hand.

But then Emily says, in a low voice that makes Myka’s heart skitter, “You don’t understand. I _am_ going to be late.”

“Really,” Myka drawls.

“Yes, _really_.” Then Emily says, “My skirt seems to be getting in your way.” She backs up, reaches behind her, and undoes the zipper. Slips the garment off her hips. “Better?”

“Uh,” Myka says.

“Oh, look,” Emily says, and her eyes are starting to sparkle, “something’s in _my_ way.” She pulls back the sheet covering Myka. “Better.” Then she removes the elastic from her hair, shaking her dark locks free.

“That’s better too,” Myka says, dazed. Sometimes the things Emily does, the way she moves… it’s like she isn’t even human, Myka thinks.

Emily reinforces this thought as she slides, glides onto the bed, onto Myka. “If I’m going to be late,” she says, leaning down and speaking directly into Myka’s ear, “I really think you should make it worth my while.”

“I think,” Myka says as their bodies start to move against each other, “I can accommodate that request.”

TBC


	3. Chapter 3

Myka has found, over several weeks of cohabitation, that Emily can be… what’s the right word? Predictable. Some people might jump from that to the idea that Emily is boring, but Myka thinks of her more as straightforward. Unadorned. Like Emily’s way of being in the world is a difficult piece of music that she can play proficiently but doesn’t yet know well enough to improvise around. Given the accident, given how much she clearly did have to relearn, this is not a surprise.

But sometimes there are behavioral sparks, spikes, that seem to come from somewhere, some _one_ else entirely.

Myka remembers one incident in particular: they had stayed too late at their favorite restaurant (Italian, the site of their first date), and it was almost 1 a.m. when they left. They’d both had a little more wine than they should have, and they were leaning a little more heavily on each other as they walked… and out of nowhere, they were accosted. He was probably just an opportunistic purse snatcher, but Myka’s Secret Service training kicked in, and she moved to push Emily to the ground and take him on. Instead, Emily had crouched, sweeping her leg around, taking their assailant down in one fluid, efficient motion. Oh my god, Myka thought. She’s _trained_.

Later, at home, Emily said, anxious, fretting, “Does this mean I was a violent person? Before?”

And Myka reassured her, kissed her, reassured her again, that no one so gentle, so loving, could possibly have been a purveyor of the sort of brutality she was picturing.

Still later, however, Emily said, in the dark of their bedroom, in a voice that was not quite hers, “But we can’t be _sure_.”

“No,” Myka conceded, “we can’t.”

Emily slid over to Myka and began to touch her in ways that Myka found distinctly _uncanny_. “Bodies are strange,” Myka murmured into the shadows of Emily’s neck.

“They are,” Emily said. “They remember things.” And she proceeded to _handle_ Myka, to bring into their bed something that Myka could understand only as a vestige of that night’s violent encounter.

Thinking back on that night, Myka is unsure how to feel about having given herself over so completely to that trace of someone whom she did not, does not, _cannot_ really know. _But then_ , she reminds herself, _you did that with Emily the first time_. She hadn’t known Emily at all, and yet she’d shown herself to be eager, willing, even desperate. Emily could have turned out to be anyone; it isn’t fair for Myka to object when, as it’s turning out, she _is_. Or she might be.

So. If Myka isn’t going to object, what’s she going to do? She thinks that maybe what they need is to improvise a little more—maybe if they fill Emily’s life, both her and Emily’s lives, more completely now, that other Emily will stay gone. (Because Myka does have that one small worry, one that usually stays very deeply buried: that Emily will one day remember that she is supposed to be somewhere else, with some _one_ else.)

“Do you know what I think?” she says, one morning. They are in the kitchen, filling thermal mugs with coffee, preparing to leave for school.

“That sugar is to be avoided at all costs?” Emily is at present depositing into her coffee more sugar than Myka would consume in two weeks.

“Well, yes, I do think that. But do you know what else I think?”

“Myka. We could play this game all day.” Emily is giving her the voice of stern sweetness, the tone that Myka knows is at least part of the reason why every single one of Emily’s students is in love with her.

Not that Myka can blame them, of course, and she tries not to be jealous when Emily goes out of her way to be kind, particularly to the girls and boys who seem to look on her as an angel who’s come to their small town to show them that it is _just fine_ to be who you really are. (They put up with Myka, when she comes by the classroom, as an unfortunately unavoidable component of the glorious object lesson that is the life of Ms. Lake.) That Myka is having the occasional moment of doubt as to who Emily really is… well, that’s just the way irony works.

“What else I think,” she tells Emily, “is that we should take a class.”

“What kind of class?”

“A cooking class. Remember, we met that woman at the mall? She teaches at that cooking school.”

“She was very careful to say it’s ‘The Boone Culinary Institute.’”

“I don’t actually care what it’s called.”

“ _She_ did.”

“I love you,” Myka says. “I love you, and you are extremely annoying.”

“So are you, with your ‘do you know what I think.’”

“Because something else I think is, neither of us can cook at all.”

“That is true,” Emily concedes. She sips at her coffee.

Myka wonders if it’s possible to develop diabetes from all the way across a kitchen. She decides she would rather develop it from standing closer to Emily. She goes to her, wraps her long arms around her from behind, and leans down to breathe on her neck, right beneath her ponytail.

“Don’t mess up my hair.” But Emily says it softly. She arches her back against Myka.

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“You _always_ dream of it,” Emily accuses.

Myka is overcome anew by her joy at what fate has, in its wisdom, decided to bestow on her. She tightens her hold on Emily.

Emily sighs and says, “All right. If you really want to, a cooking class.”

****

“I think I saw Adelaide’s teacher tonight,” Nate tells Amy. Adelaide is busy brushing her teeth; it is almost story time. He adds, “And her _girlfriend_.”

Amy says, “I think she’s more than her _girlfriend_.”

“Whatever,” he says.

“No, not _whatever_. Am I your girlfriend?”

“Well, no, but—”

“Okay then.” Amy lifts Adelaide’s stack of library books. Whichever one she chooses to read, Adelaide will protest that she wants something else. Amy picks one of the ones she can’t stand and says a small prayer of thanks that Adelaide doesn’t yet understand reverse psychology.

“Anyway, she’s good-looking,” Nate says.

“Who, Myka?”

“I actually meant her girlfriend. Sorry, not her girlfriend. Her not-girlfriend. Partner? Wife? Are they married or what?”

“We’re in _Wisconsin_ ,” Amy says.

“Right. Sorry. So _anyway_ , like I was saying, she’s _really_ good-looking.”

“You might want to rethink that comment and get back to me.”

“I mean aesthetically! Is there some reason everything I say is wrong tonight? I am _learning to cook_. You should be impressed.”

“I’ll be impressed when you actually cook something edible. And learning to cook isn’t that impressive. Most people can do it _without_ special training.”

“Apparently not Myka and her hot girlfriend,” he says, grinning.

Amy decides to ignore him. Mostly. “She reminds me of someone, I think.”

“Who, Myka?”

“No. Her _hot girlfriend_. I can’t quite figure it out. She looked a little familiar when I first saw her, but when she started talking, the voice was wrong. Or something.”

“Well, maybe you’ve met her before somewhere. Or she’s got a twin.”

A pajama-clad Adelaide emerges from the bathroom and asks, “Who’s got a twin?”

“Nobody,” Amy tells her.

“That’s not true,” Adelaide says. “Some people have twins.”

“Sweetheart,” Amy says, “do you know what it means to be overly literal?”

“Hot girlfriend,” Nate mumbles.

“Hot girlfriend?” Adelaide repeats, quizzically.

“Your father is being silly.”

“All I’m saying,” Nate declares, “is that if being overly literal—by which, my darling daughter, I mean _extremely picky about words_ —is hereditary, nobody in this room got it from me.”

After due consideration, Adelaide says, “I think Ms. Bering is overly literal.”

“Then she’d fit in fine around here,” Nate says.

“I bet you think her hot girlfriend would,” Amy shoots at him. But she smiles.

“Nah,” Nate says. “I got one of my own. Won’t ever need another.”

****

Boone is a small town. Myka knew that that was true, population-wise, before she even set foot in Wisconsin, but over the months she’s lived here, further evidence has emerged to support “small town” as a real descriptor. One piece: when the school holds an event—a concert, a play, a talent show—the entire town turns out for it. The mayor always puts in an appearance. (Myka likes the mayor. She seems very no-nonsense; Myka can easily picture her with a gun and a badge, and that is a high compliment for her brain to bestow on anyone.) So the Spring Carnival might as well be called the Biggest Event of April.

Myka’s never really been a fan of Big Events. For one thing, providing Secret Service protection at Big Events was always a logistical nightmare involving too many moving parts. She worries that she’s never really going to shed the wary watchfulness around crowds that her training drilled into her. She worries that she will duck at loud noises; she worries that she will reach for her weapon at inappropriate times. There are times during the course of a normal day when she does reach for her weapon, just to make sure it’s there, as she used to. When it isn’t, she feels an instant of panic, as if she’s locked her keys in the car. She supposes that she is in fact exactly like Emily, with all these involuntary motions and tics—the only difference is that Myka knows where hers came from.

She is therefore expecting to find the Spring Carnival unnerving. Instead, she experiences it as an unfolding of layer upon layer of wonderful.

First, there is Emily’s anticipatory excitement about the Big Event. It is infectious, as Emily’s excitement about anything is. Myka is a sucker for those eyes when they sparkle… well, being honest, she’s _even more_ of the sucker she _already is_ for those eyes when they sparkle. “I don’t remember anything like this!” Emily has been enthusing since she realized the Event was nearly upon them. “It’s going to be so _new_!”

Faculty members are required to work a certain number of hours at the carnival, and Myka and Emily find themselves assigned to run the popcorn booth. “Food preparation,” Myka had complained. “They obviously don’t want to sell any popcorn.” (Their cooking class, sadly, left both as inept in the kitchen as before—possibly even more so, because each keeps trying correct the other now. Myka’s not sure how only two cooks can actually be the “too many” that spoil the broth, but a select few of Boone’s restaurants are nevertheless experiencing an upswing in business.) But as it turns out, no one at the carnival seems to care what their popcorn tastes like. The kids buy it to throw at each other, mostly—even kids as old as Emily’s students, who grin and goof for her as they hand over their money and take silly pictures of each other, and of Emily, with their phones.

They don’t take pictures of Myka. They glance furtively at her, and some of them even scowl. “Why do they hate me _so much_?” Myka asks Emily, though they’ve had this exchange a million times.

“They don’t hate _you_ ,” Emily says, as she always does. “They hate the _idea_ of you.”

“That is never going to make me feel better,” Myka grumbles.

“It isn’t supposed to,” Emily tells her. “It’s supposed to make you stop asking me the question.”

****

Myka sees some of her students, her students and their parents, early in the evening, but the eight- and nine-year-olds thin out as the night wears on. Myka gets bolder (she’s embarrassed that this is what it takes, but), and by the time she and Emily actually get to start enjoying the carnival itself, it’s all she can do to keep her hands even vaguely to herself.

She’d sworn she wouldn’t get on any of the rides; they are far too dangerous. But she and Emily ride the Tilt-a-Whirl (because Emily can’t remember ever having ridden a Tilt-a-Whirl), and they’re thrown against each other over and over again, and Myka is only human: when they exit the ride, her arm falls over Emily’s shoulders, and Emily leans against her, and it’s like Myka thinks high school could have been, if only she’d thought differently about some things… if only she’d known Emily then. Because it’s Emily’s face, Emily’s love, that makes Myka believe in these possibilities.

Myka is contemplating Emily’s left ear, contemplating kissing it, when a quite solid little body runs into her leg with a _whump_. “Ms. Bering!” she hears, and she muzzily turns her head down, regretfully.

It’s Adelaide. “Hi,” Myka tells her.

“It’s past my bedtime!” Adelaide shouts, and Myka suspects she’s been introduced to cotton candy or the like pretty recently.

“Oh god,” says Amy Plumb, rushing up to make Adelaide let go, “I’m so sorry. It is _so_ past her bedtime.”

Myka laughs. “It’s fine,” she says. It really is. “Adelaide,” she says, “this is… this is someone very important to me. Her name is Emily Lake.”

“Hot girlfriend!” Adelaide exclaims.

“Oh my _god_ ,” Amy says. “I could not possibly be any sorrier, but this is not my fault. You have to blame my husband, who’s right now buying Adelaide _even more_ sugar… wait, that’s worse, isn’t it? I just had two beers. I’m _so_ sorry.”

“You know what?” Myka says. “Tonight, I don’t care. Tonight, she is totally my hot girlfriend, and I don’t care who said it or who knows it.”

Emily elbows Myka in the abdomen and says, less sotto voce than she might, “Except possibly Adelaide, hm?”

“Oh, right,” both Myka and Amy say at the same time.

Emily crouches down to Adelaide. “I know you like Ms. Bering a lot. Don’t you?”

Adelaide nods.

“Well,” Emily says, “I do too. Maybe we could both like her a lot? And both help to take care of her?”

Adelaide nods again. Very solemnly. Myka thinks that Emily is working her magic again, weaving her spell… no one can resist it. No one. Not Myka. And certainly not an eight-year-old. “You know what?” Adelaide says to Emily, conspiratorially.

“What?” Emily asks. She bends her head down, and Adelaide whispers in her ear.

Myka looks at Amy. Amy shrugs her shoulders and says, “Want a drink? Since everyone we know is so busy…”

Myka takes her up on it.

****

Much later that night, Myka says to Emily, “All right, I’ll bite. What did Adelaide say to you?”

“You’ll bite?” Emily says coyly. “Where and when will that happen, exactly?”

Myka licks her neck. “I’ll bite you right here, right after you tell me.”

“Promise?” Emily says, pulling her fingernails down Myka’s side.

“Hurry,” Myka warns.

“She said that I needed to learn to cook,” Emily laughs. “That that’s how her dad’s helping to take care of her mom.”

“Seriously?”

“She was _extremely_ serious about it. That if I were going to help you, cooking would be essential.”

“If she only knew,” Myka says, “the disaster that is _that_.”

“She knows I’m your hot girlfriend,” Emily points out.

And Myka smiles and laughs and pulls Emily to her and thanks fate, _again_ , for this magic. “I know you’re my hot girlfriend,” she says. She feels like everything is right. She feels strong. “And you know what? I would also like it if you would be my hot wife.”

END


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